I bought it anyway without reading the reviews which is unusual for me.

I suspect the dialogue will be simple, along the lines of

"You will...die..."
"Blah blah...prophecy"

The story IMO is beyond repair, SC1 story was so much better but now it and its characters have been ruined.

I think the missions will still be fun but I hope the missions involve a bit more exploration. Too many of the WoL levels had you trapped in one location with the rest of the map conviently revealed. I like the idea of giving kerrigan more powers and evolving the zerg as they go along though.

I picked up my copy today- I'm loving the campaign so far. In multiplayer so far the Swarm Hosts have given me a couple of seriously epic wins, in other games I've been absolutely destroyed by Skytoss- I've no doubt they're going to get nerfed, Zerg has nothing to counter a massive Protoss sky fleet at the moment.

I'm 5 missions in on brutal difficulty. The story is crap and full of facepalm moments and plot holes as expected, but the missions are fun, as expected. Basically, if you liked Wings of liberty for it's fun gameplay and didn't mind the story sucking, you will feel the same way about Heart of the swarm.

And, of course: There is always countless hour to be spent grinding the ladder.

i must be the only person who has never played SC2 multiplayer, i play the campaign, and thats it , i just want the story and the awsome cinimatics (Blizzard stop making games and just make a Starcraft TV series or movies, same for Diablo)

SCII was alright, but not good enough for me to consider paying Blizzard $150 for the entire series. $70 for the first game was enough. I think I'll grab this long after the Protoss expansion is out, and I can get all three games in a Starcraft II War Chest Bundle or something.

... I think I'll grab this long after the Protoss expansion is out, and I can get all three games in a Starcraft II War Chest Bundle or something.

Yeah, but by then Apple will discontinue the intel support layer in the OS, rendering all copies of Starcraft II and its expansions unplayable on any Mac. On the bright side, Diablo III won't work anymore, either.

__________________
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."-Carl Sagan

Yeah, but by then Apple will discontinue the intel support layer in the OS, rendering all copies of Starcraft II and its expansions unplayable on any Mac. On the bright side, Diablo III won't work anymore, either.

Eh. I doubt Apple is going to cut x86 support any time soon. I bet it'll be around for at least another decade. You're stuck with Diablo III for at least that long. :P

Also, I do most of my gaming on Windows. We all know MS likes to keep 200 years worth of backwards compatibility with their software around, so even if Apple does do something stupid, I'll still be able to play it.

Eh. I doubt Apple is going to cut x86 support any time soon. I bet it'll be around for at least another decade. You're stuck with Diablo III for at least that long. :P

Also, I do most of my gaming on Windows. We all know MS likes to keep 200 years worth of backwards compatibility with their software around, so even if Apple does do something stupid, I'll still be able to play it.

When I took the jump to Mac about 3 years ago, I was leaving about 18 years of Windows/DOS behind, and I liked what I saw. Since then, a number of questionable decisions by Apple have rooted me back in reality, and I couldn't agree with you more: If you want to game (or use Quicken), use Windows.

Sigh . . .

__________________
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."-Carl Sagan

When I took the jump to Mac about 3 years ago, I was leaving about 18 years of Windows/DOS behind, and I liked what I saw. Since then, a number of questionable decisions by Apple have rooted me back in reality, and I couldn't agree with you more: If you want to game (or use Quicken), use Windows.

Sigh . . .

And here I am toying with the idea of getting a new iMac as my main computer.

It's like every single thing Apple does, there's always one great part, and one terrible part. While I like their build quality, and have a slight preference towards OSX over Windows, I always feel like I'd be compromising something big by making the switch full time.

Like I get the new iMac. It's great. Small form factor. A decent amount of power. Space saved on my desk. Lots of good points.

But I can't switch out my harddrive. If it goes down, instead of spending 20 minutes swapping it out for another, I have to end up shipping it off to Apple HQ for a couple of days to get it replaced. That sucks. I could offset this by getting a Thunderbolt enclosure and running OSX off an external drive without any sacrifices in speed, but TB stuff is about 3x overpriced at the moment. I'd be spending a bundle of cash to match equivalency with the PC scene.

Playing through the early missions so far. Its quite enjoyable but as I suspected the story for now has turned into a love story...

...a story where Raynor once said that he would kill Kerrigan for the death of Fenix and for the countless innocents slain during her mad quest for power.

I have noticed that the blood, physics and death animations are more exuberant than they were previously and as a result my Mac slows down more often with this game compared to WoL. I removed my Apple 5770 and have a PC 5870 remaining yet there is little difference in performance...perhaps because its a PC card.

I am running 10.6.8 and I get major framerate issues in some scenes, especially the ones on Char with the nukes. Get 0 frames per second sometimes when they drop. Lots of resource stalls. As mentioned, this is with PC 5870, Mac Pro 3.1.

yeah the story had some plot holes, but it was 'satisfying' so im ok with it.

but the sode missions (dont want to say much to spoil) were real neat, they did a much better job with the campaign this version, it kept me more interesting than the first one, rather than just a grind of similar type of missions or those 'annoying' missions.

the story does have it plot holes and wth moments, but you can live with it.

in the first SC2 there was a real problem with the 'custom game/arcade' multiplayer,

it was horrible, there was no open games list, and you end up playing the same crap thats always on the 'top' charts.

they fixed it like a 6-8 months ago, no where near WCIII status yet (in terms of variety of maps and quality and quantity), but it'll get there.

The story IMO is beyond repair, SC1 story was so much better but now it and its characters have been ruined.

Because it now reads like a really bad Japanese manga story.

"And hence did the Great Archon of the Terran Conblaberation Devonariel Mengistutu III, Crown Prince of the Regency, did impregnate the Zerg queen Plithsquiskkkshikki (aka Nancy Grace.) Thus was set into motion the catastrophic Wars of the Triple Alliance. Billions died."

__________________The Islamists have an infinite supply of Toyota pickup trucks. This war could take a long time.

I've been playing on a retina, on ultra getting 26+ FPS 2880x1800 (max res.)

Ultra on 28x18 with 30 - 50 FPS seems pretty normal to me, depending on the # of units on screen. On 19x12 (which looks really good) I'm getting consistently over 50 FPS in Nexus Wars, which is really a fair stress test as there can be thousands of units at once.

Does anyone else wish you could have Abathur as your advisor voice in multiplayer instead of the Brood Mother? It'd be so much better hearing him than what we have now, I.e. the screechy "WE REQUIIIOOOORRE MORRRE VESSSSPENE GASSSSSS". Hearing him say "Evolution Complete" in the campaign just sounded so right.

Does anyone else wish you could have Abathur as your advisor voice in multiplayer instead of the Brood Mother? It'd be so much better hearing him than what we have now, I.e. the screechy "WE REQUIIIOOOORRE MORRRE VESSSSPENE GASSSSSS". Hearing him say "Evolution Complete" in the campaign just sounded so right.